PRESS RELEASE for immediate release 23.10.14
PEERS URGED TO DITCH ‘DANGEROUS & MISGUIDED’ MEDICAL
INNOVATION BILL
The patient safety charity Action against Medical Accidents (AvMA) is urging peers to
ditch or radically amend the Medical Innovation Bill when they debate it in the House of
Lords tomorrow (24th October). The charity proposes an independent commission to
look at how innovation can be supported and what barriers might exist. The bill has been
promoted by Lord Saatchi, its author, as being about providing a last chance for dying
cancer patients. However AvMA’s briefing points out that the bill would apply to any
form of medical treatment - including purely cosmetic surgery – allowing an individual
doctor to persuade patients to undergo untested and dangerous treatment. Responses
to a Department of Health consultation about the bill from all leading medico-legal
organisations confirmed that the bill was based on a false premise – that potentially
beneficial treatment is being held back because of fear of litigation. There is no
evidence to back up this assertion. Opponents to the Bill include most medical royal
colleges and the British Medical Association. Most fear that the bill would have the
opposite of the desired effect – making responsible innovation more difficult by creating
a confusing and bureaucratic set of rules and regulations. The Ebola nurse Will Pooley
was recently treated with an unlicensed drug, demonstrating there is no problem with
doing so, where appropriate.
AvMA chief executive Peter Walsh said:
“ This bill may be well intentioned but it is both dangerous and misguided, based on
emotion and anecdote. It poses a threat both to patient safety and justice, and fails to do
anything to support responsible innovation. Blaming a lack of innovation on patients who
have been injured as a result of negligent treatment is absurd and unfair. Everyone
would like a miracle cure when they are in a desperate situation but sometimes there
just isn’t one. When a treatment is turned down it will almost always be because the
NHS refuses to fund it, or because doctors agree it would do more harm than good. This
bill would help rogue doctors prey on vulnerable patients as happened with Dr Ian
Patterson in the Midlands with his own ‘innovative surgery’. It would also put good
doctors under pressure from pharmaceutical companies pushing untested drugs.
Instead we propose an independent commission/inquiry to look at what the evidence
about barriers to innovation are and how innovation can be supported.”
ENDS